


since you're gone you're just another day

by lovelyflowersinherhair



Series: Table Four [27]
Category: Baby-Sitters Club - Ann M. Martin
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-07
Updated: 2020-01-07
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:08:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22154551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovelyflowersinherhair/pseuds/lovelyflowersinherhair
Summary: “We were fighting because I said I would go, but I made it clear I wasn’t happy about going. That I was only going because she wanted to.”
Relationships: Janine Kishi/Charlie Thomas
Series: Table Four [27]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/14125
Comments: 3
Kudos: 13
Collections: BSC December Fandom Fest 2019





	since you're gone you're just another day

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LuxKen27](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LuxKen27/gifts).



> Title borrowed from John Lennon's How Do You Sleep (Charlie is Relating to many of his songs). Takes place during Friends Forever 1 Kristy's Big News. I hope that you like this, LuxKen!

“Would you care to explain what  _ that _ was about?” Janine asked Charlie quietly, as she watched him pace back and forth across the carpeting of her room, more than a bit bewildered by the argument that she had witnessed on the sidewalk in front of her house, and the sudden appearance of Charlie in her doorway. The slam of the door that led to Claudia’s room had informed her that Kristy was in an equally foul mood, and, well, they didn’t call Janine a genius for nothing. She knew better than to ask Kristy why she and her older brother had practically come to blows in the middle of the street. “Charlie…?”

“Maybe I’m sick of having to be the bigger person, okay?” Charlie said after a moment, though he didn’t have the decency to look her in the eye, and elected to fixate his gaze on her carpet, which, while Janine thought was a decent accent to her room, wasn’t worthy of being glared at. “Maybe I’m tired of having to go along with things that I don’t want to do because it’s the fair thing to do, or the right thing?” She watched as he ran his hand through his hair, his baseball cap having landed on her floor during his tenth lap around the bedroom. “He called last night.” 

“Your father?” Janine ventured a guess, before she read the atmosphere and changed her tactics. “I mean...Mr. Thomas?” 

Right. Mr. Thomas was a perfectly neutral way to refer to the man who had lived in the house across the street from her family from the start of her formative memories until the day that he’d abandoned his family, and thrust Charlie into a role that she found to be at best questionably appropriate for someone of his age. 

Charlie had made it clear that he wasn’t his father -- Janine wasn’t sure if that meant that Watson had fulfilled that role, or if Charlie had just decided that having no father of his own design was better than having a father who barely called, wrote, or sent child support -- and she was determined to accept that choice that he’d made, even though she wondered if she was the  _ only _ one in his life that was willing to do so. 

“The bastard calls up,” Charlie said, his tone rough, and she suspected that there was emotion behind his words, in spite of the front that he put up about not caring about his missing parent. “And has the  _ nerve _ to invite us to his damn wedding. What is it? Wedding number 12?” He shook his head. “Kristy wants to go to it, and Mom and Watson, they said that Sam and Kristy could only go if I went with them.” 

Charlie stopped his pacing rather abruptly, and he sat down on the edge of her bed. She could feel the waves of tension wafting off him, and she reached her hand out to place it on his shoulder, hoping that the physical contact would comfort him. 

“You were fighting because you said you wouldn’t go,” she assumed. “Right?”   
  
He shook his head. “No,” he told her. “We were fighting because I said I would go, but I made it clear I wasn’t happy about going. That I was only going because she wanted to.”

“She thinks you should want to go?” 

He nodded. “You know how Kristy can get. She doesn’t see the true person that he is. She just sees the fantasy that he encourages.” 

Janine bit back a sigh. “Maybe he has changed? I mean...is it possible?” 

“I guess,” Charlie said, and he glanced up at her, his gaze dubious. “I mean, stranger things have happened.”

“You should go with an open mind,” she told him. “I know that you don’t want to,” she added. “I just think that that’s what’s fair, what you should do, for Kristy and Sam’s sake, not necessarily your father’s.” 

He shrugged. “Maybe you’re right,” he said. “It just pisses me off that he does this stuff and doesn’t include David Michael and doesn’t care that it makes him feel terrible and that I want even less to do with him than I already do, and--”   
  


“I know,” she assured him. “I just think that you can have those feelings and still participate in things.” Privately, Janine thought David Michael was dodging a bullet not being invited. “Maybe it’s time for David Michael to...accept that the father figure he has in his life is the only father he’s going to have.”

“I can’t tell him that,” he muttered. “Even though he’d be better off if it was as if Patrick never existed.” He sighed, and he scrubbed his face. “I’ll apologize to her,” he said after a moment. “It’s the right thing to do, even if i don’t necessarily believe in it.” He managed a small smile. “Thanks, Janine.”   
  


“For what?” 

He shrugged his shoulders. “Calming me down, I guess. You always know what to say.”


End file.
